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WORK TITLE: Speed of Life
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Shepherdstown
STATE: WV
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
Not found in LOC
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:University of Memphis, B.A.; Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, M.F.A; University of Illinois at Chicago, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and poet. Shepherd University, assistant professor of English, 2010—.
WRITINGS
Fiction and poetry contributor to numerous periodicals, including La Petite Zine, storySouth, Cream City Review, Black Warrior Review, and Blue Mesa Review. Pate also self-published a novel, Speed of Life.
SIDELIGHTS
James Pate is a writer, poet and assistant professor of English at Shepherd University. Pate grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Memphis. He received an M.F.A. from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in English with a creative writing dissertation from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Pate lived in Chicago for many years before moving to Shepherdstown, West Virginia, to teach at Shepherd University. His writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Blue Mesa Review, and Berkeley Fiction Review.
The Fassbinder Diaries
The Fassbinder Diaries, Pate’s first book, is a collection of short stories and poems. Pate’s poems and prose focus around the late director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, suggesting the narrator is either a fan of the man or wants to be perceived as a fan.
At times, the style Pate employs mimics the cinematography of Fassbinder, while at other times it seems to bypass stylistic classification at all. The pieces range in subject matter from imaginations of Fassbinder’s daily schedule, to reimagining or examining his notable works. Some pieces explore the experiences of watching the films, while others pose questions about the relationship between the artist and the critic or fan. Erica Bernheim in VERSE wrote that in Pate’s collection, “realism can become much more horrifying than the imagined.”
Speed of Life
Speed of Life, Pate’s third book, is a twist on the classic noir, set in 1978 America. Former rockstar Oscar is shaken out of retirement when he is informed that his ex-bandmate, Tommy, has overdosed in a hotel room in Tucson, Arizona. Oscar, now living in Memphis, does not buy the overdose story, and sets out with his cousin Juanita to discover the real cause of Tommy’s death.
In their investigations, they uncover an unsavory connection between Tommy and a Memphis politician. It seems that Tommy, along with hitmen Liz and Horace, were attempting to blackmail the politician, but their plan went wrong, resulting in Tommy’s death. Liz and Horace are left untouched, and make every effort to keep Oscar and Juanita away from the truth.
After some near-death encounters with the hired guns, Oscar and Juanita retreat to New York City, hoping to hide away. Unfortunately, Liz and Horace are hot on their trail, and violence awaits all four in New York. Don Crinklaw in Booklist wrote, “fans of gratuitous violence with occasional discussions of contemporary music and drugs may like Pate’s crime novel.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2017, Don Crinklaw, review of Speed of Life, p. 22.
Publishers Weekly, April 3, 2017, review of Speed of Life, p. 56.
ONLINE
Shepherd University Website, http://www.shepherd.edu/ (January 30, 2018), author faculty profile.
Small Press Book Review, http://thesmallpressbookreview.blogspot.com/ (January 30, 2018), review of The Fassbinder Diaries.
VERSE Online (Oxford, England), http://versemag.blogspot.com/ (October 27, 2014), Erica Bernheim, review of The Fassbinder Diaries.*
James Pate is a fiction writer and poet. He is the author of THE FASSBINDER DIARIES (Civil Coping Mechanisms), FLOWERS AMONG THE CARRION (Action Books), and the crime novel SPEED OF LIFE (Fahrenheit Press).
He has had work published in Black Warrior Review, Blue Mesa Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, New Delta Review, Cream City Review, Plots with Guns, storySouth, La Petite Zine, Pembroke Magazine, Superstition Review, and Shotgun Honey, among other places.
James Pate is an Assistant Professor of English at Shepherd University. He earned his BA in English at the University of Memphis and his MFA at the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. He also has a PhD in English with a creative writing dissertation from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Pate is a poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in La Petite Zine, storySouth, Cream City Review, Black Warrior Review, Blue Mesa Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Pembroke Magazine, Juked, and Bayou Magazine, among other places. He is the author of The Fassbinder Diaries (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2013), a poetry collection inspired by the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
ABOUT
I am a fiction writer and poet. I grew up in Memphis, graduated from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, lived in Chicago for a decade, and now live in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. My fiction has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Blue Mesa Review, Berkeley Fiction Review.
12/21/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Print Marked Items
Speed of Life
Don Crinklaw
Booklist.
113.18 (May 15, 2017): p22.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Speed of Life. By James Pate. June 2017.244p. 280 Steps, paper, $16.95 (9788283550382); e-book, $7.99
(9788283550399).
Dames in classic noir are often gorgeous blonds who cross their legs and break you heart. But Liz, a
character in this offbeat novel, is different. Weighing 300 pounds and dressing like Brando in The Wild
One, she bloodies masochistic clients in vividly detailed scenes. She's a wonderful character, but, sadly,
she's not what the novel is about. It's the story of punk musician Oscar Hilton, who's jolted out of retirement
by the death of a bandmate. Oscar doesn't believe the official cause-overdose-and begins his own
investigation because, as Sam Spade says, when your partner is killed, you're supposed to do something.
Oscar's quest takes him into an underworld of drug pads stinking of urine, unwashed bodies, rotting food,
and worse. Pate attempts to expand the noir formula with long sequences of impressionistic writing that are
quite beautiful in themselves but slow the story to a dead stop. The embers of the plot catch renewed fire,
though, when Oscar clashes with Liz. When this obviously talented author learns how to fold a story into
his fine prose, he could become something special.--Don Crinklaw
Crinklaw, Don
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Crinklaw, Don. "Speed of Life." Booklist, 15 May 2017, p. 22. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A496084761/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e7b5f6d7.
Accessed 21 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A496084761
12/21/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Speed of Life
Publishers Weekly.
264.14 (Apr. 3, 2017): p56.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Speed of Life
James Pate. 280 Steps, $16.95 trade paper (244p) ISBN 978-82-8355-038-2
Fans of gratuitous violence with occasional discussions of contemporary music and drugs may like Pate's
crime novel. It's a hot summer night in Memphis, 1978, when rock singer Oscar hears that his ex-bandmate
Tommy has OD'd on heroin in a hotel room in Tucson, Ariz. But Oscar isn't buying it, and, with the aid of
his cousin Juanita, sets out to discover what really happened. Tommy had been part of a botched attempt to
blackmail a Memphis politician, along with Liz, a hired gun, and her henchman, Horace. Liz and Horace,
who know what led to Tommy's death, try to stop Oscar and Juanita from learning the truth. After assorted
extreme mayhem is visited upon various people for various reasons, Oscar and Juanita flee to an
unconvincing dystopian version of New York City, with Liz and Horace in hot pursuit. More violence
ensues, with random strangers shooting and getting shot. Pate, the author of the prose poem The Fassbinder
Diaries, writes well enough, but this noir exercise adds nothing new to the subgenre. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Speed of Life." Publishers Weekly, 3 Apr. 2017, p. 56. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A489813708/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0c3b605f.
Accessed 21 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A489813708
Review of James Pate's THE FASSBINDER DIARIES
The Fassbinder Diaries
James Pate. Civil Coping Mechanisms, $12.95 paperback (124 p) ISBN: 978-1937865207
I kept imagining a corpse. I kept imagining a dirty, thin corpse in the hall of a dead home with a camera somewhere in the hallway, a camera with a cracked lens, missing its tape, the record-light still blinking as if something was taking it in—all of the bleak and cold seconds. This is where you'll find James Pate, in the light or in the absence of light, in-between the seconds of a theatrical production. The Fassbinder Diaries is a wavering grayscale of film spool: “The footage is grainy, as if the world being shown has gone through a storm of broken glass shards.” This Gothic collection of short stories and poems and hybrid prose / poems is thoroughly blended with filmic murder. You're not just reading these stories, you're watching them: “We are watching them in the dark. I mean we're in the dark ourselves.” Pate's prose tumbles onto itself with sentences often repeated or with small variations that nearly cause disorientation. But it's so purposeful that the reader is made into a desperate voyeur—attention is held, move on. It is obvious to compare Pate with Johannes Goransson due to the fact they are both children of Burroughs, and if you like Goransson you should pick up The Fassbinder Diaries without hesitation as Goransson has championed this book for a long time. He recently called it “Book of the year,” and states that Pate is, “...one of my...closest collaborators.” But if Goransson is a fever dream then Pate is a calculated nightmare. Pate's world feels like it is bending into itself—it's already in darkness but how much violence is there? Pate is the person who found the missing tape from the camera in the dead home. Here is something entirely new and entirely consuming. (June 2013)
Purchase The Fassbinder Diaries HERE.
Reviewer bio: Ben Spivey is the author of the novella Black God. He recently invested 146 hours into the video game Dark Souls.
VERSE
Founded in Oxford, England in 1984, Verse is an international journal that publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art. The print edition publishes portfolios of 20-40 pages, while the Verse site publishes book reviews and individual poems. Verse is edited by Brian Henry and Andrew Zawacki.
Monday, October 27, 2014
NEW! Review of James Pate
The Fassbinder Diaries by James Pate. Civil Coping Mechanisms, $12.95.
Reviewed by Erica Bernheim
Growing up in Italy before the internet, my sister and I maintained meticulous lists of the most ridiculous translations we encountered, translations that were neither literally correct literally nor entirely phonetic. Often, we noticed, there was a food element, something decadent, decaying, or simply just off: the local movie theater showing “Ratty and Ham” (instead of U2’s “Rattle and Hum”), “Porky Coolness” (a strange rendering of salsiccia dolce, or sweet sausage). Coincidentally, the pig—both as animal and symbol and consumable object—features heavily throughout The Fassbinder Diaries, James Pate’s 2013 collection of “filmic poetry.” Upon its publication, The Fassbinder Diaries received well-deserved attention from a number of readers and critics who praised the wide scope of Pate’s lens as well as the generosity of his allusiveness, the pop culture references made both familiar and ominous throughout the text. In a Montevidayo post, Johannes Goransson alludes to Pate’s formative years in Memphis, a city which evokes crime and decay and a specific type of Southern grittiness replacing the more straightforward gothic tropes. In this instance, as in Fassbinder’s oeuvre, realism can become much more horrifying than the imagined.
By structuring this collection around the notion of the late director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the author of this collection establishes himself either as someone who really likes Fassbinder, or—more interestingly— as someone considering what it means to be perceived as someone who likes Fassbinder. Pate is not writing exclusively about the films; he is writing about the experience of watching them, whether in the first or the third person, his words often mimicking the techniques in the films themselves. The Fassbinder Diaries is a text about art, cinematic and problematic, exclusionary, and contradictory. We are inside the movies and then we are clearly outside of them outside, floating in the meta, “the Catonic Room” (“U-Bahn”), and we are navigating the territory as newly released synesthesiac agoraphobics or clostraphiles: “I hear, among other things, your fingers with their crowns of blood.” Each poem is a striation; the book is the muscle, pulsing with energy perverse and erotic, as we are never loved exactly the right way, the aforementioned compromise cum exploitation, the magnetic boomerang-esque projection of the idea: “The figure without hair probes part of its thinner shoots into the soft patches of the figure without brains and the figure with only a few branches of meat curls around the figure that consists of pink mist” (“Exhibit x:”).
“Return of the Holy Beasts” is where, for me, The Fassbinder Diaries navigates the most surprising territory. We have a clear sense of the speaker, even as s/he shifts between ages, times, locations, (perhaps more reminiscent of Orlando than Fassbinder in places), but anchored to the banal as a way of navigating and, ultimately, moving towards nowhere. Some of the questions this collection anticipates are also banal: the difference between poem and prose poem, the (auto) biography and its value as artifact, and Pate seems well-aware of how such territories have been previously broached. For instance, in “Imperial Tangos,” as the entire poem reads: “The endless boulevards extend among endless extractions.” Precisely half as long as Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” in this poem Pate is less concerned with Imagism than with the machinations of readers and critics, eternally bound to finding meaning and following all possible paths in a text in search of that elusive signifying, something to be proven, something victorious.
While rereading this text, I thought of that distance between translation and original, the humor that comes not necessarily from a joke or utterance, but from the mere presence of a word where it is not supposed to be. There must be a long German word that encapsulates this, and if so, I have little doubt that Pate, as Ken Baumann says, “gets it,” but keeps it from his readers. Throughout the entire collection, the diary motif returns, as does the idea of reading on more than one level. In “The Double Life of Mick Jagger,” we enter the culmination of the doubling, although it explicates little for the reader. The doubling is a complication, rather than an explication, a wrinkle rather than a clean crease. The images throughout the collection are stacked, fitting tightly together, but allowing for the unexpected. In an earlier essay about Fassbinder’s fourteen hour film, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Pate himself describes the work as, “cavernous and roomy and full of echoes and a dizzying amount of characters wander through it.” This effect is certainly present in The Fassbinder Diaries, and as the collection resists the human impulse towards classification, it also reflects characteristics from Fassbinder’s films, creating a connection where we would expect one to be.
Part Two of Pate’s collection veers from reimaginings of Fassbinder’s daily schedules and into a consideration of his “first theatrical production at a farm in southern Germany.” The seven poems in this section position the aforementioned pig against humans (“The pig has a human wail and the pig has a human tongue”) and also place the human speaker in their domain: “I am fond of pig parties. / I have been to many pig parties” (from “Pig Knot”). These pigs are not Mina Loy’s “Pig Cupid,” yet they are immersed in a sort of erotic garbage, rooting in search of something unspeakable and unnamable. Animals show up later in “Dream of the varying Pork Cloud,” an ominous poem which personifies dreams and ends with possible dream interpretations of mice, rats, tigers, and panthers, ultimately foregrounding the ridiculousness of the idea of trying to define or decipher one’s own dream.
The Fassbinder Diaries ends not only with the final entries in the imagined diary, but with the reprise of an eight-question quiz which appeared earlier in the text. In the earlier version, Fassbinder is the subject of the questions, which begin with his birthplace and end with his death and an examination of it. In the second version of the quiz, it’s Querelle (the protagonist in Fassbinder’s final film, released posthumously in 1982). I read this as the inevitable conflation of one’s own life with one’s creative work, the desire on the part of the audience to substitute the artist for the protagonist, particularly when death is involved. This is also another type of translation. Fassbinder is dead; long live his diaries.